The Cubs signed DeJesus on November 30th to a 2-year guaranteed contract with a 3rd year option. He's guaranteed $10.5 million over the contract. I think a couple of the reasons the Cubs chose DeJesus is quite simple and I mentioned them in that article.

DeJesus played RF for 116 games last season and played 8 games in CF. He’s a damn good fielder so it’s not surprising the Cubs have signed him. They need to improve the defense and DeJesus does just that. While his Total Zone last year was -1, defensive metrics aren’t exactly reliable over just one season. The previous three years his Total Zone was 9, 15 and 13. His UZR the last 3 years has been 16, 2.5 and 7.5. His DRS last year was 10. The guy can field.

The Cubs have also sucked at running the bases. DeJesus has been worth 16 runs in his career on the bases according to UBR. He was worth 2.7 last year. According to Baseball Prospectus’ baserunning metric, EQBRR, he was worth 1.3 in 2011.

This team has sucked defensively and on the bases for a long time and this improves the Cubs in both areas. He might just be the team's best baserunner already and is almost certainly the best fielder. Kosuke Fukudome was no slouch on defense either so the Cubs remain above average defensively at the position.

DeJesus is coming off a down year offensively, but added over 10 runs on defense and running the bases. Overall, he was a 2.2 fWAR player a year ago. Total Zone thought he was average on defense and his rWAR was only .6. He had been worth somewhere between 3 and 4 rWAR the previous 5 seasons so we should expect him to regress toward that. Below are his projections for 2012.

Projection

PA

H

HR

BB

SO

avg

obp

slg

wOBA

CAIRO

524

127

11

45

80

.274

.343

.413

.334

Guru

386

90

7

30

59

.260

.323

.379

.312

PECOTA

593

149

11

49

87

.274

.342

.404

.328

Oliver

623

147

12

51

95

.267

.334

.402

.325

Bill James

466

115

8

42

73

.271

.349

.399

.327

RotoChamp

523

127

10

48

83

.267

.346

.402

.331

Dav-Marcel

494

118

8

45

75

.262

.338

.381

.317

Steamer

608

142

12

54

95

.265

.340

.404

.339

Marcel

492

116

9

40

77

.265

.334

.694

.324

Average

523

126

10

45

80

.267

.339

.431

.326

We projected 504 plate appearances from DeJesus, which would make him worth 1.4 WAR (+1 baserunning and +5 defense).